USAID, MACPAC looking for new CIOs

The
U.S. Agency for International Development is looking for a new IT chief. Jerry
Horton has been the chief information officer since 2009, but on the CIO
Council's website Jay Mahanand is listed as the acting CIO at the agency.
Mahanand has been USAID's deputy CIO since 2009.

A USAID spokeswoman would not confirm or deny Horton left his role as CIO, saying
only, "We do not have anything to announce at this time."

But, sources say Horton left USAID in mid-January to take a position in the State
Department's CIO office.

At the same time, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) put
out the help wanted sign as Mathew Chase moved to the private sector.

Neither move is surprising as both have been in their positions for more than
three years.

Horton has accomplished several important initiatives during his tenure, including
improving
the agency's cybersecurity by moving toward continuous monitoring and
implementing access controls on the computer network through smart identity cards.
Horton also worked to integrate USAID's networks with the State Department's
systems and take advantage of big data analytics,
specifically around financial data.

Chase became a vice president at Avalere, a healthcare consulting company, where he leads the
company's information technology efforts and provides strategic direction to its
businesses in the delivery of technology.

One more technology-related update: Stacy Riggs received a nice
promotion to be the director of strategy and performance management at the General
Services Administration. Riggs had been the deputy director in the Office of
Technology Strategy in the Office of Governmentwide Policy for the last three
years.

Riggs is leading a new group as part of GSA's IT consolidation effort that will
focus on strategic planning, performance management, budget and workforce planning
under the Office of Planning and Governance.

DoD asks for vendors' help to simplify acquisition regs

The
Defense Department is serious about updating its acquisition processes — and
it's trying to give Congress some food for thought.

DoD kicked off what Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of Defense for
acquisition, technology and logistics, called the need to simplify the existing
set of laws governing how the military buys goods and services by issuing a
request for comments earlier this week focusing on the impact
of specific contracting statutes.

In the notice, DoD says it has identified about 400 acquisition requirements
based solely on statute.

"As part of this assessment, the director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition
Policy would like to receive the views of interested parties identifying
particular impacts associated with specific contracting statutes," DoD stated in
the notice. "There is an extensive body of law and regulation that govern the
department's business. We are seeking to better understand the impact experienced
by industry resulting from requirements based on statute."

DoD wants four basic questions answered:

Particular impacts associated with specific contracting statutes

Why the identified impact does not achieve the intended benefit of the
identified legislation, or why the intended benefit is not helpful to the
department

Any recommendations for alternative approaches to achieve the intended benefit
of the identified legislation

Candidate DoD Federal Acquisition Regulations (DFARS) and component
supplements requirements that, although not based in statute, warrant similar
consideration

At the same time, DoD is finalizing the
rewrite of its acquisition regulations under the 5000.02 guidance. Kendall
issued
the interim guidance in November. The 5000.02
guidance has been in major need of a rewrite for some time, as DoD has made
major changes and strides in how it buys products and services — think rapid
acquisition processes — and the type of things it buys — think
enterprise IT services from the Defense Information Systems Agency.

DoD's request comes as the House Armed Services Committee continues reviewing the military's acquisition process. The
committee was supposed to hold a hearing last Wednesday on overcoming acquisition
reform obstacles with former Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator
Dan Gordon, former Undersecretary of the Army Norm Augustine and
Jonathan Etherton, president of Etherton and Associates and a former Hill
staff member, before the snow storm postponed it.

Expect that hearing to be rescheduled in the coming weeks. Rep. Mac
Thornberry (R-Texas) is leading the new panel to reform the defense
acquisition process.

Good government groups get behind grants reform

Seven
good government groups are putting their weight behind the Grant Reform and
New Transparency (GRANTS) Act, which the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee approved last October.

While lawmakers and the White House, both under President George W. Bush and
President Barack Obama, have increased the oversight of acquisition spending and
pushed for more data transparency, attention to federal grant making has been
through a series of fits and starts.

The Office of Management and Budget launched a line of business initiatives around
consolidating grant-making systems. It made limited progress.

In October 2011, OMB merged
two existing grant oversight boards into the Council on Financial Assistance
Reform. COFAR recently updated its
priorities for 2014 and 2015 to include developing a single audit
metric for grant-making programs by March, and to submit to OMB by June draft
regulations for risk-based guidance targeting waste, fraud and abuse.

Last February, OMB announced the first major rewrite of the grants-making policy
and oversight with an aim to simplify and streamline the regulations across the
government. In December, it released final guidance for Administrative Requirements, Cost
Principles, and Audit Requirements for federal awards.

Given all this effort, the grant process lacks standard data and has limited
transparency.

The good government groups want Congress to act more quickly to make grants
information more accessible. They support the
GRANTS Act provision to establish uniform standards for how
agencies publish in downloadable and searchable formats notices, awards and
disclose competitive grant information. The bill also calls for OMB to create an
online portal to hold all of this data.

"We are encouraged that such approaches to grant transparency also take into
consideration an ability to provide oversight of grant reviewers, but more should
be done to protect the integrity of the peer-review process while maximizing
disclosure," the groups wrote. "Publishing statistical information about volume of
grant applications, denied applications, and processing time would also be a
meaningful addition."

The groups offered one concern about the GRANTS Act leeway in giving agencies the
ability to withhold information that's part of the "deliberative process," such as
ranking and scoring data or intellectual property.

"[W]e urge you to address this in your legislation. We urge you to strike the
balance between discretion and disclosure in favor of public access, and that you
include a study of this balance by the Government Accountability Office," the
letter stated.

The committee passed the GRANTS Act in October, but it hasn't had time on the
House floor for debate or a vote.

IT Job of the Week

For those technology folks on the rise, MACPAC's loss
could be your gain. The CIO position is open with Mathew Chase (see earlier item)
leaving for the private sector.

This is one of those agencies where you will not have to walk into an aging
infrastructure and systems filled with COBOL. Nope, Congress created MACPAC in
2009 as a non-partisan agency charged with providing policy and data analysis to
the Congress on Medicaid and CHIP, and for making recommendations to Congress, the
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the states
on a wide range of issues affecting these programs.

The CIO will do what technology managers usually do - oversee systems and data,
and provide strategy input around budget and other issues.

Out & About:

If cybersecurity is your focus area, the AFFIRM lunch on Thursday is
where you need to be. The panel, which is hosted by our own Francis Rose,
features Margie Graves, deputy CIO, Department of Homeland Security;
Bill Lay, acting deputy CIO for information assurance and chief information
security officer for the State Department; and Steve Viar, director of
FEDSIM in the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration.

Also on Thursday, the Coalition for Government Procurement announced a breakfast featuring GSA's Mary Davie and Mark
Day, to discuss the priorities of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) at the
Tower Club in Vienna, Va.